In the Wonderland
by VioletzeEcoFreak
Summary: In one place, there was a dream. No one could be sure who dreamt it, or if it came to being on its own, but it was a tiny, little dream." One from which many did not wake.


Prompt: Based on the Alice Human Sacrifice Vocaloid. Dark. _Really dark_.

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**Joker**

In one place, there was a dream. No one could be sure who dreamt it, or if it came to being on its own, but it was a tiny, little dream. And the dream thought to itself, "I don't wish to disappear. How can I get people to see me?" The little dream thought and thought and thought, until it came up with an idea. "I can get people to stray into me by letting them make their own world!"

The little dream made itself into an island, hidden by the mists, and sent the wind to whisper that the island was magic, that it could be shaped into whatever the heart desired. Men ventured from across the globe to try and find the island, but it was so small that it was often overlooked. The island that was a dream grew angry as people passed it over. It began to create land that would tempt the adventurous and the treasure seekers. Thick forests and valleys full of flowers, a few caves that promised danger and action. The lands were made rich by the dream.

The dream, exhausted by its work, fell into a deep, full sleep, waiting for the men to come and make sure the dream lived on.

**Spade**

The first man to set foot on the island was a knight of the spade, and he came with a sword in his hand and conquest in his heart. The man had a dark scar on one hand in the shape of a spade. They say it used to be a heart-shaped scar, but he was so disgusted with the idea he added a stem himself, so as to look stronger. Even without the scar he was a fright, though, with eyes the colour of blood and fire and hair as white as snow.

The man set foot into the dream and began making his way through a field of roses, the vines twisting and rising as if to say "none shall pass". But the man with a spade scar on the back of his hand bore his sword courageously and sliced a path through the thorns to draw nearer to the centre of the island. The petals of the roses, fragile sweet-smelling things, floated to the ground and created a road of red on which the man walked.

But the dream saw the way the beautiful roses were destroyed without a thought and cradled a single petal sadly. So the dream brought the knight of the spade towards the black forests beyond the roses and thorns. Although he had not killed a single animal the man was bloodstained. The very stems of the roses had bled upon him, and the red of the petals rubbed against him until he looked like a man from the most ferocious of wars.

Having been brought into the forest, the dream set about having the thorny vines of the roses grow around the man, and the very forest accused the man of being a murderer and sinner, as the blood of the rose vines stained his clothes and hair. The cage grew around the knight of the spade until no light could get in, and the dream placed a door in the vines and left the man there.

**Diamond**

The second man was called the man of the diamond, for his family had gained all its wealth in the mining and selling of diamonds. So important was the jewel that a blue diamond had been tattooed to the back of his hand. Whenever someone from his home asked him where he was from he held up the symbol of the blue diamond and people would know he was the child of a noble family.

The man of the diamond came to the dream as a singer. His voice was pure and soft and his music tame, and although he was inexperienced his song in a dream thick with magic made wonderful things happen. He called the land the land of wonder and created his own songs for it, none particularly good but all well-meaning. The man of the diamond sung people into the dream, lured outsiders towards it like a siren.

However, the mind of the man of the diamond was fragile. Something inside him disliked the magic but fed on it all the same, and it became a second part of the man. Sometimes his eyes, normally gentle and violet and child-like, would grow cold and mad and his songs would taint the dream. The madness within the man of the diamond only grew stronger, while his gentle tameness vanished. The world he'd produced became crazy under the tainted music. The dream tried to teach him songs, but those songs were blood-stained by the knight of the spade and only drew the madness out more, allowed it to taint what the man of the diamond created.

The man of the diamond sang in the field of roses where the knight of the spade had once raised the blooms. Although the dream had created the world the land was unable to heal itself. Anything wounded stayed wounded, and so the path of red remained. Standing in the roses, the man of the diamond felt his madness come over him, and although he resisted the madness took a gun from his coat, where it had been since he'd arrived in the land of wonder.

The madness in him went cross-eyed as it watched the gun press against his forehead, and the man of the diamond cried for his sisters as the madness pulled the trigger. The blood ran down his face and soaked into his scarf and continued, washing his body in red until even his blue diamond tattoo was the colour of the crimson roses that surrounded him. And as the man of the diamond died everyone loved him and Death kissed him into the eternal sleep.

**Clover**

The third Alice to come to Wonderland was named the child of the clover, for when she was a child the first plant she touched was a clover. The clover, so taken by her beauty even at her young age, vowed to cling to her forever, and even when it died a green mark shaped like her clover clung to her hand.

The child of the clover was so infinitely beautiful when she became part of Wonderland even the dream was enamoured with her, and crowned the young woman queen for all time. The queen deluded many with her shapely body and airy laugh, born under the light of the tropical sun and nurtured in the lagoons of her homeland.

As the queen, the child of the clover shaped Wonderland as she wished, just as the dream had intended. The land became green and light, but the taint of the man of the diamond's madness and the knight of the spade's bloodlust made the land strange, and the queen stranger still.

She was queen for all time, as the dream declared, and was therefore immortal. But the air of the land slowly drove people to insanity, still bearing the notes of the songs of the madness that people breathed and gathered within themselves. Many died before they could show what they'd become, but the queen continued to breathe the air and entangle herself with the dream after whole generations of her subjects were dead and gone.

The child of the clover began to see things distorted. She would look in the mirror and expect to see a lovely young woman with a clover on her hand, and instead see an old hag in her gown, the clover on her hand wilted away. Some days she would see herself as a rotting corpse, or as an infant. Her perception of herself grew worse and worse, until she no longer could comprehend her own appearance and needed her attendants to decide when she was ready for her. Then all she could see of her own people was rotting flesh, and the child of the clover despaired.

However, the child of the clover had a strong, unfractured, airy mind that the toxic air of Wonderland couldn't harm, and while her eyes were filled with blackness she was able to rule the strange kingdom the dream had given her. And under her rule the land swelled with the dreams of all its inhabitants, until Wonderland was a world unto itself, filled with doors that lead to strange places people had created and then forgotten.

**Heart**

No one knew where the fourth Alices came from. They claimed to be twin brothers, for their appearance was nearly identical, and they frequently stood hand-in-hand, so well synchronized that the younger was the left hand and the elder the right hand and they were always acting as person in two bodies.

But they knew where they were from. There was only one of them at first, and neither cared who was first, because there were together. And that one was given the mark of a heart on their hand by the dream, so that he could wander the world without fear.

But alone and afraid of loneliness, the boy longed for a playmate, a brother. So he used the magic in the air on a mirror, and he reached towards his reflection and gripped it and when his reflection came free of the mirror the heart split so that the younger twin had half on his left hand and the older twin had half on his right.

The heart was the most valued of all the symbols, for the spade represented courage, the diamond change, and the clover airiness. But the heart represented strength and humility and intelligence and bravery, and those virtues were split between the brothers so that they needed each other to be whole and remain safe in the Wonderland's wilderness.

And they did remain safe, although nightmares prowled the dreamscape and the older brother was hardly careful, the younger not strong enough to protect either of them. They wandered Wonderland and peered into doors, making trails for the dream and mapping the world in their minds.

The twins ventured past the Queen's city and even had tea with her at her invitation, (the elder _hated_ tea, but the younger was so happy to be invited to anything they accepted) before going to the valley of roses. The vines had grown and entangled and made the valley like a sea of crimson flowers. There was, however, a path of red where the roses were the colour of blood, and the older twin dragged his brother along. The younger saw the corpse of the man of the diamond, as fresh and frightening as the day he died, but dared not tell his twin.

Down the path of red the twins ventured, and as they got closer they began to hear things. The first Alice still lived, and his influence had spread past the door to whisper to the passer-bys. The older twin heard the voice say that he was the original (and maybe he was, for his brother was a smaller, weaker reflection of himself, right?) and why shouldn't he be one and whole again?

But he whispered to the younger, too, that the younger was the original, and that the older was merely what he imagined himself to be. "And you can be him," he whispered, "if you take what is rightfully yours." The first Alice cooed to the younger brother, who felt only loyalty and love for his brother, but lacked the strength and will to protect it. By the time the twins of the heart were at the door, the knight of the spade had all but taken control of the younger's body.

When the young twin felt control of his own body again the door was open, and only a cage of roses remained inside. His left hand ached and when he looked he can only see blood. His right hand hurt less, but when he turned to see why there was a prickling ache, he screamed. The two halves of the golden heart were stitched messily on his hand and his brother's dead body was right below. He could see the blood still oozing from his right hand.

The younger brother gathered up his dead twin's body in his arms, talked just as they used to and imagined his brother's responses. He wandered the land just as they used to, now strong enough to defend his dead brother from the nightmares. Just like he always wanted.

**Star**

The fifth Alice was not an Alice at all, for the first four Alices shaped the world, and this one destroyed it. He was a mage, an expert in dreams, and saw how people were trapped in Wonderland without their knowledge, ruled by a Queen who only saw death, a child no longer, and sung into being by a madman. So the green-eyed man cast a spell to bring himself into the Wonderland, out of sight of the dream. The spell made its mark on his body in the form of a black six-pointed star on his left hand, his seal.

The mage was horrified to discover how the dream had been twisted, and how it in turn had twisted other people. He spent his time freeing people from the dream and Wonderland, awakening them until there were only five left besides himself.

He awakened the knight of the spade first, by beating him down and casting his spells so masterfully that the knight could not fight back and wished himself away in the deepest corner of his heart. The man of the diamond was awakened by being put to rest, as the mage said the rites of the dead over his bloody body and shut his eyes. The Queen was difficult to steal away from the dream, and the mage had to coax her from the castle with the promise she could see the world as it truly was again, if only he was allowed to perform the spell he required outside the city. And there he removed the Queen's crown and named her the child of the clover once again. He even knew her name, and when he named her she awakened all at once to what she truly was.

Now the Wonderland was small, with no doors to twisted dreamscapes to make the mage get lost. And he saw a distraught boy clutching another boy, looking confused and somewhat helpless. Both were bleeding profusely from one hand, and the one held in the other's arms looked like he was dying, or had just died.

"P-Please," the boy murmured sadly, "don't. If you wake us up, one of us won't exist." And he nearly cried even though he now had his twin's strength and toughness, for he'd spent what felt like an eternity carrying the weight of his sin.

And the mage nearly gave in to those tears, because the little boy was just so broken and clung to his twin's body as though it was the only thing left in his life he could rely on. Maybe it was. But the mage wanted to confront the dream, and to do that he had to awaken all the dreamers left in the land of wonder. All that was left were the twins who weren't.

"I'm sorry," the mage said, and he held the two boys close to him and told them it was time to wake up. Over and over and over again until the younger twin of the heart released his brother and sobbed and left the Wonderland.

It was the mage and the dream left, and the dream, twisted and ancient as it was, looked at the mage and nodded at his opponent. "Let us begin," it said, and the dream sounded so tired that the mage nearly allowed it to continue existing out of pity. Instead he held up his hands to cast a spell and began to chant.

And England awoke.

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A/N: I actually sort of like writing darkfic, but it's crazy hard for me. Or, rather, emotionally draining. I dunno if that effects the quality or not, though.

For the baffled, this is not a historical exploit at all. Nor is the Joker character a nation. Just an OC I used.

Feel free to guess who's who~

And thank you for reading!


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